Criminal Justice Trends

Criminal Justice Trends
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Criminal Justice Trends
The corrections system has been a method of keeping offenders afar from the society as well as general public. Correctional facilities are designed, and a lot of more are being established, to accommodate the future criminals. This paper provides an evaluation of the past, present, and future trends of the Corrections system. A comprehensive discussion of the managerial and budgetary impact that the future trends would have on the corrections system, courts and law enforcement is provided.
In recent years, amongst the forces which have affected corrections in the United States, privatization and accreditation have been amongst the most prominent. The future of corrections in the United States would be affected by everything from the current public opinion and national economy to aging of prison populations and drug-related crime. The trends which would continue impacting corrections in America include intermediate sentencing alternatives, more pragmatic treatment, restorative justice, unit management/direct supervision strategies, and regionalization of jails (Stinchomb, 2005).
Until the late eighteenth century, correctional facilities were utilized largely for the imprisonment of debtors who failed to meet their obligations. They were also used to imprison the accused persons who were waiting to be tried, as well as convicts who were waiting for their banishment or death to be enforced (Ikilo, 2013). Afterward, incarceration came to be accepted as a way that can be used to punish criminals who were convicted. In the early American prisons, inmates were actually kept in isolation. During the nineteenth century, prisoners were allowed to work together, albeit only in quietness. Prison reformers, at the ending of the nineteenth century, effectively advocate backed the segregation of inmates by sex, age, as well as sort of crime done; intermediate sentencing; parole; rewards for good behavior; and vocational training. During the late twentieth century, inmate populations started to increase substantially as arrests for violent offenses as well as for possession of small quantities of illicit drugs rose (Ikilo, 2013). The correction system largely involves the government given that Federal and State governments actually have the biggest investment in this industry to date; together with private companies that run a lot of America’s jails.
The construction of new jails in recent years throughout the United States has actually skyrocketed. For over 100 years, San Quentin and Folsom were California’s only maximum security prisons. From ‘84 to ’94 however, California constructed 8 new Level 4 – maximum security – penitentiaries (Ikilo, 2013). As the state’s prison population started to rise in the early 1980s, Folsom prison became severely overcrowded; the New Folsom, California State Prison at Sacramento, is just less than ¼ a mile from the old penitentiary and it houses roughly 3,000 maximum-security prisoners. The New Folsom jail was dangerously overcrowded even prior to its completion in 1987. Presently, California has the largest prison system in the western developed world, holding mor...